8.1 in-car bluetooth not playing Nokia Drive voice navigation

[astondg]

Hey guys,

I have an Alpine CDE-153EBT head unit in my car, I bought it in April specifically for Bluetooth streaming with my Lumia 920. Initially everything was perfect, streaming music, activating Tell Me from the head unit, taking calls, using Nokia Drive, etc. BUT just after I bought it I upgraded to the 8.1 dev preview and now I no longer receive the voice navigation directions through the head unit. Everything else works as it did before and if I'm streaming music at the time then the music stops and there's a pause where the voice directions should be playing but nothing comes through, it's just a few seconds of silence.

I've tried to use the option for "Connect in a different way to use Speech with Bluetooth in my car" and that does get the voice directions to work but that causes 2 other problems: 1. it seems really slow, by the time the sound starts coming though the speakers the voice direction is already half finished (i.e. I only get the 2nd half of what's being said) and 2. the activation of TellMe/Cortana no longer works from the head unit.

Is anyone else having this issue? It's annoying that this was all working pre 8.1 and I've been installing the 8.1 updates hoping it would be fixed, but nothing yet has made any difference.

 

[Draganta]

I had this problem too in the factory radio of the Toyota Yaris. It is really annoying, those pauses when there should be talking. Everything else seemed to work (I did not try Cortana though). Only happened on a 8.1 device.

 

[astondg]

I'm glad I'm not the only one. Apart from music, voice navigation is probably the thing we all want most in the car.

EDIT: It looks like there's a post with a list of other in-car Bluetooth issues in the MSDN Dev Preview forum titled 'major problem with ford sync and here navigation'. None are exactly the same as what we're experiencing but the general response from Microsoft was that it's an app/firmware issue and to report the issue to Nokia and the Here Drive team.

Thanks,
Aston

 

[ngc891]

My Alfa Romeo wont pair with my phone (n1020) since the dev preview 8.1, and my car uses blue&me made by..... Microsoft!

 

[astondg]

I contacted @NokiaHelps about this and they assumed it was an 8.1 issue and directed me to the MSDN 8.1 Dev Preview forums, where they assumed it was a firmware/app issue and subsequently directed me back to Nokia/Here support. I pressed @NokiaHelps a little further and they said they can't confirm if it will be fixed or not for the 8.1 release and didn't specify if it was a known issue. TBH I was disappointed in the response from @NokiaHelps, it sounds like we'll have to wait until 8.1 is released and then raise this with them at that stage to get anything done about it.

 

[jfa1]

I had issues with my Jabra drive BT and the 1520 but it was just a pairing issues which got fixed by gasp reading the directions again.! I had issues connecting the 1520 to Ford Sync in her 2014 Ford Escape.